The impact of communication structure on new product development outcomes

Abstract

New product development teams face important challenges to their performance due to the novelty of the work and the need to rapidly develop shared knowledge and goals. However, little is known about the relationship between the structural properties of communication and performance in these teams. This study examined the effect of communication structure, specifically hierarchical and small-world structures on the delivery performance and quality outcomes of a large-scale new product development project. Our longitudinal analyses revealed that structuring communication patterns in a hierarchical manner significantly improves delivery performance. However, hierarchical communication has a detrimental effect on quality while smallworld communication structures improved the quality outcomes of development teams. We discuss the implications of these results for collaborative tools that support communication tradeoffs. Copyright 2012 ACM.